Saturday, July 20, 2013

When we last left our lavender-locked lass she hadn't quite made up her mind whether to join the X-Men or not, and then at the end of that issue Longshot joined the team. So obviously, this issue we're lookin' at tonight (Uncanny X-Men #213), in which she does decide to join the X-Men, must occur afterUXM Annual #10. Except Longshot's not in it. Which means it happens beforeUXM Annual #10. Except #213 has to happen after A#10, because Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Colossus are out of action due to the Mutant Massacre in #213, but they were active in A#10. Except...augh! Claremont, why the Sam Scratch don't you date these things?

Error in continuity or not (for the No-Prize, I say Longshot was stuck at the airport picking up his luggage), this is the issue in which Betsy becomes an X-Man. She's not on the cover (Wolverine is, surprise surprise), but she does get to be in the corner box of the cover, marking her X-costumed debut...

...and she does have the honor of not only having her big Cerebro™-helmeted-face plastered all over the splash page but of having the story named after her. That's something Marvel Girl never even got!

Huh, now her eyes are purple too. But does anybody in comics draw a woman biting their pouty lower lip better than Alan Davis? No. No, they do not. (Get outta here, Greg Land, I said artists.)

E-Betsy-eth is eager to aid the X-Men in investigating attacks , but new X-Men headmaster Magneto and new X-Men team leader Storm think she'll be better off on the sidelines. With her "we'll take your proposal under advisement," it's obvious that Storm has been to business school. Also: Mon-El is gonna be pretty ticked when he finds out Magneto has stolen his cape.

Suddenly, the X-Men's mortal enemy, Air-Rrgh Sabretooth attacks! Hey, why is he called Sabretooth? His teeth are perfect. I just wonder these things sometimes.

First appearance of Psylocke's fondness for sharp bladed weapons! And hey, is Sabretooth a vampire? That would explain a lot, actually. Also, somewhere in that third panel there really needs to be a Kick in the Crotch. See, Betsy, you don't even know the most common trope of comic books...that's why they won't let you in the X-Men!

Tonight, thanks to Storm's escrima stick (I bet she stole that from Tim Drake), no one will have to pay for the privilege of walking with Psylocke. I think that's what she means.

As befits everyone's introduction to a super-hero team, we see 1) Psylocke take on the villain by herself and 2) we hope she survives the experience. Also, another thought: how do Magneto and Quicksilver get their hair to do that? Mousse?

Let's face it, she's becoming an X-Man...and looking great doin' it. Say, how does she get her hair to do that?

You can tell this is a very old comic book, because how often do you see all the X-Men smiling in a single panel? Also, this is before Wolverine gave everyone on the team secondary smoke cancer and Jim Shooter made him give it up.

That Psylocke X-Men costume is actually one of my favorite of hers, although it violates some of my personal dislikes in giving supervillains something to grab onto (e.g. Ms. Marvel's sash) in her puffy sleeves, bare shoulders and dingly-danglers hanging from her wrist. What are those for?

Oh yeah! For her backup career as Olympic ribbon dancer.

Anyway, that's the story, wherever it falls in continuity, of how Psylocke came to be an X-Man. (And the Japanese version hasn't even happened yet!) So let's take a purple-eyed gander at this week's Psylocke Psurveillance Psummary:

The ad promises that a Tootsie Roll will give you enough energy to ride a bicycle THREE MILES downhill, on Jupiter. If that's the case, then how many Tootsie Rolls did Superman, on the cover of that self-same issue of World's Finest, to do this:

And just for fun, here's a shortened version of the same Captain Tootsie adventure (printed one ish earlier, no less!), featuring Cap's crime-fightin' buddy Dick Tracy and Tootsie in a Jar!

Tootsie VM ad from World's Finest Comics #16 (Winter 1945)

You can see a close(r)-up of the items you'd find in a Dick Tracy Detective Kit here, but I can't find any pictures of a jar of Tootsie's answer to Ovaltine, Tootsie VM. Anybody still got some in their cupboard? I'll test it out for ya!

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

I'm been meaning to follow up on my post of Monday in which I promised you the next installment of a series about Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, but it's just been too darn hot to write a lengthy post. How hot is it? Well, let's check in with our good pal Hawkguy and see where he's pointing on the Marvel Earth-616 Temperature Alert System!

And, since "The Beast from the Runaway World" was a reprint from Mystery in Space, that makes this not only a double-barreled cover-stravagnaza on tonight's 365 Days of DC House Ads but also a new rare sighting of a Same Story, Different Cover!

Monday, July 15, 2013

As you may remember a couple days ago, we were looking at the gothic romance comic Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, which presented us with neo-Wuthering-Eyre-style love stories until it abruptly ended at issue number 4. But was that the end of it? Why, no, no, it was not, and you should have guessed that just from the very existence of this post.